


The Chance I've Got

by raven_aorla



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: 10th Anniversary Show, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, it's okay if you don't know either, references to SPG lore, references to the comic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: Peter VI decided they should keep just enough Crystal Pepsi in storage to bring the Jon back for special reunion concerts every few years. Seventy-two hours of being activated again, long enough to rehearse, long enough to catch up. The Jon agreed. The Spine did his best to stay stoic.





	The Chance I've Got

**Author's Note:**

> \- I do not actually believe this is what's going on with the Jon. I choose to take what the robots say is going on at face value. However, the sad version makes for an interesting (to me, anyway) storytime. 
> 
> \- Contains mild spoilers for the 10th Anniversary Show. The main moment that inspired this fic is included in [the ad for the digital concert.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C22woNsCu98)
> 
> \- The SPG timeline says Peter VI had his accident after Hatchworth joined the band, but Sam Luke's comic about Hatchworth getting released from the vault shows Peter VI with the mask on. I've seen an explanation floating around that his big accident is not the one that he lost his face in, but he'd lost it already in a PREVIOUS accident. Because that's a bit complicated for this fic and would pull focus, I've reconciled it in a different manner. 
> 
> \- Title taken from "Sound of Tomorrow".

When their supply of Crystal Pepsi started running out, Peter VI did his absolute best to change the Jon back to running on water like the other Walterbots did. Peter V tried to help, but the dementia was severely against him. Michael Reed and the Walter Workers pitched in, but they were only trained for maintenance and repair, not major overhauls. The Spine knew it that Peter VI was doing his best. Still, there were times where the only reason he hadn’t grabbed the newest Walter heir by the shoulders and shaken him, shouting things like _it can’t be any harder than bringing Hatchworth back_ and _this is basically murder_ , the only reason at all, was that Peter VI was so skinny and fragile that the Spine might accidentally break something.

Rabbit directed most of (her, though they didn’t know that at the time) energy towards hassling Pepsi Co. to start making it again. Hatchworth spent most of his time spending as much time with the Jon as possible, learning all the Jon’s parts in songs written by the other two. They were not going to play any songs the Jon had written without the Jon to sing them. 

Peter VI decided they should keep just enough Crystal Pepsi in storage to bring the Jon back for special reunion concerts every few years. Seventy-two hours of being activated again, long enough to rehearse, long enough to catch up. The Jon agreed. The Spine did his best to stay stoic.

“This way the fans’ll believe I’ve been having adventures like Upgrade is,” the Jon said, fiddling with his suspenders from his position perched on Peter VI’s worktable. He was already being powered down for days on end in order to stretch their supplies. It wasn’t a big leap of a concept. “It’s a nice story. I want them to believe that.”

“Y-y-y-y-you’ll see how we’re doing. It’ll be like-like-like _wrrrr_ time travel,” Rabbit said with manufactured optimism.

Peter VI sighed and beckoned for Rabbit to come over for maintenance. “Okie dokie, your turn. The Jon, I think Hatchworth wanted to have a movie marathon?” Movie marathons were a good activity. The Jon was now discouraged from doing a lot of running around, which used up more fuel. This was an extremely difficult rule for an automaton that had always retained the excitability of a toddler.

“Do you need to do any maintenance on me?” The Spine asked.

“Nothing the Walter Workers can’t handle next Monday as usual,” Peter VI said, already shooing the Jon away and unzipping the back of Rabbit’s shirt to get at the main access panel. 

The Spine nodded and headed for the Hall of Wires. He spent the next ten hours outside of his chassis, just a head and a spine, deep as possible in the tangled mess only he really knew the way around to keep anyone from finding him.

When the time came, the Jon asked to be put in his favorite power-down closet instead of in a storage crate. Elderly Peter Walter V, the one who reassembled all the robots when they were shipped back in pieces after the Vietnam war, the one who’d accidentally made all of this come to pass due to financial troubles and bad business advice, was also the one who wiped the traces of oil that had slid down the Jon’s otherwise smiling, still face. Annie put an arm around him afterwards, and led him away. 

Time passed. Rabbit took a peek at the Jon every once in awhile. Hatchworth sometimes dusted him, or read him a story. The Spine did none of these things. The fans came to love Hatchworth, though they never stopped asking about the Jon.

Peter VI healed a rift in the space-time continuum but lost(?) his face in the resulting blue matter explosion. He took to permanently wearing the blue-matter-blocker mask he’d first developed in order to safely retrieve Hatchworth from his vault. It took him awhile to bounce back from that, but he eventually did. A lot of his family had been in blue matter incidents, and in some ways he’d gotten off easy by comparison. 

Matthew Smith and Michael Reed left, though they kept in touch. The Walter Worker revolving door kept turning. It was the only way any of them lived long. Working with blue matter was unstable like that, Peter V said during one of his increasingly rare lucid moments. (Despite how sometimes he forgot why his son was masked and told him to take the silly thing off.)

Steve started dyeing his dreadlocks, though if you tilted your head, you started wondering if those really were dreadlocks, and if it had anything to do with him never appearing without a bandana. Blue matter, maybe. Nobody asked. Lil Steve was enough of an anomaly.

One day Wanda was trying to find some old mementos to show her husband and found GG instead, which was a...mixed blessing.

Rabbit turned out to have been originally intended to have a female body and correcting this century-old mistake improved her functionality - and mood - considerably. 

Hatchworth got restless, and the Walters couldn’t bear to force him to stay after he’d spent so many decades confined. Zero was thrilled, if nervous, to step in.

The Spine sometimes went dancing with Walter Worker Chelsea. She knew places where their appearance wouldn't cause too much of a fuss. That was nice. The fanbase kept growing, which was also nice. Things were okay. Almost all things were okay. There might have been some punching of walls when the re-released version of Crystal Pepsi turned out to have a different chemical composition that was incompatible with the Jon’s system.

(There was that whole thing about the trip to space before Hatchworld left, the one to stop a space giant from eating everything, but that was a long and strange story. The Jon would have loved to see space, though he’d have gone nuts in the tight quarters of the actual space journey. The less said about their foray into an alternate universe and timeline of nothing BUT robots in space, the better.)

Upgrade was busy dealing with a civil war in her new kingdom in Kazooland during the year of their 120th anniversary, so they scheduled it for the following year instead. Besides, that would be the 10th anniversary of when they’d started calling themselves Steam Powered Giraffe and busking in the park, the beginning of a new era for them.

***

Shortly after New Year’s, January 2018, Peter VI knocked on the door of the Hall of Wires and waited for permission before entering. He had precious can of Crystal Pepsi held aloft like it was the Statue of Liberty’s torch. His lab coat had a mustard stain, which was good, because that meant he’d actually eaten something recently. His hair was a mess, which it usually was these days because as well-adjusted as he claimed to be, he didn’t really like looking at himself in the mirror. “It’s time. Would you like to do the honors?”

The Spine slithered through the electric jungle to try to get a read on Peter VI’s body language. “Isn’t that your job?”

“You’ve been looking after your siblings a lot longer than I have, Spine,” their creator’s descendant said, waving the can for emphasis.

Norman insisted on being the one to carry the Jon to the lab, delicately grasped with his lobster-claw fingers as well as his normal ones. The Jon had been the first to accept him wholeheartedly when he joined the family. 

The Spine, having not looked at the Jon in years, had forgotten how _small_ he was. His clothes needed a wash, but nobody felt comfortable undressing him while he looked so much like an unconscious young man in face paint. Camille was standing by with a more casual outfit ready for him to change into. Rabbit had bought him a new red bowtie that she was ruining by anxiously crushing it in her hands. Zero was elsewhere, because they didn’t want to introduce the Jon to too many changes all at once.

Chelsea had a blue matter reader in one hand, in case turning the Jon back on caused any sort of radiation spike. She gave the Spine a little pat on the back and a kind smile. The sisters could speak, but as time went on, and as the color drained from their skin and the blue filled their hair, they’d been speaking less and less. Right now they seemed fine with it, but the Spine figured they’d leave soon too, and that plus his own disastrous romantic history meant sticking to smiles and dancing. 

Norman helped Peter VI prop the Jon up on a hinged, half-raised chair, much like one you’d see at the dentist. As the Jon couldn’t currently swallow for himself, Rabbit handed the bowtie to Camille before moving his head to the optimum angle and opening his mouth. The click of the aluminum can was very loud in the hush of the lab. The Spine poured the Crystal Pepsi with the greatest care not to spill a single drop. 

For twenty terrible seconds, nothing happened. Then the Jon opened his eyes and looked around, beaming. “Good morning, the Spine! Good morning, Rabbit!”

“Good afternoon,” Rabbit corrected, as if they were about to break into “One-Way Ticket” but with swapped parts.

“Are you a girl now, or are you in a dress just because you want to be?” the Jon asked, scratching his wig-covered head. His hat had been stored separately.

Rabbit grinned and did jazz hands. “I’m a giiiiiiiiirl.”

The Jon clapped his hands. “Yay! Oooh the Spine, you have all these lines on your face and neck! You have FINS!”

The Spine was not jealous that Rabbit beat him to the hug. He just piled on before she let go. 

When the Jon scooched forward to hug Peter VI, he suddenly looked shocked and sad. “Petesy, what happened?” He mimed the keyhole. 

Peter VI shrugged. “Yeah...uh...you know, the glamorous Walter life, gotta keep everyone else safe, haha, heh - awk!” The Jon was hugging him so tightly, the Spine felt compelled to remind him humans need to breathe. 

“Safe,” Chelsea declared brightly. 

“I need to say hi to everybody,” the Jon said decisively. “Who’s in the house? Other than Norman. Hi, Norman!”

Norman wagged his claws in his friendliest manner. “Good to see ya.”

“First, let me check the wheels in your feet to make sure you won’t fall,” Peter VI said, picking up a screwdriver. The Jon had actually requested that modification from Peter V after he fell in love with moonwalking. He sold it as opening up cool new dance moves for shows. This meant the Jon had to wear modified shoes as well, but the Jon was actually a half-decent cobbler for reasons he’d never explained and probably involved his solo backpacking trips to Kazooland.

The Spine realized that the Jon might never have enough powered-up time to visit Kazooland ever again. Something must have shown on his face, because normally-irreverent Rabbit squeezed his hand. 

***

The next day, the Jon had seemed perfectly pleased to rehearse with everyone, including all the other former band members - though he was sad that Sam couldn’t make it and that nobody else was willing to pick up his sandwiches. 

When the humans needed to go home or to bed or to grad school or whatever it was they did, though, the Jon vanished. On a hunch, the Spine went to the Jon’s room. All of the Jon’s possessions were still there, not touched except the occasional dusting. The robots usually powered down upright in a closet, but the Jon had a bed for lounging.

The Jon wasn’t lounging, though. He was barefoot and right in the center of the bed, hugging his knees, even the bright feather in his hat giving the effect of drooping. He wasn’t crying like he pretended to do at the fate of poor Captain Albert Alexander. He just had quiet leaking affecting his left eye.

The Spine sat on the edge of the bed and took out his pocket square. He had several, and he was also pretty good at folding them so stains didn’t show while they were tucked in his pocket. He handed it to the Jon. The Jon didn’t move. The oil was at risk of trickling down to the new bowtie, so the Spine cautiously dabbed at the slick black tears himself. 

“I’ve been acting like it doesn’t bother me,” the Jon said, turning his head to look at the Spine. His “cheekbone” ridge was smudged now. “I don’t want to make everyone sad. I just want them to be happy I’m awake.”

The Jon’s whimsy and energy made it easy to treat him like a child, but the look in his eyes was a powerful reminder that he wasn’t. The Spine made a throat-clearing sound. “We’re happy you’re awake.”

“I was enjoying ‘Brass Goggles’, especially Matt’s drum solo, that was an epic and _so_ cool thing to add, but then - I think if Hatchworth had been the one singing my part after the drum solo, that wouldn’t have been so bad, because I taught it to Hatchworth. But I was gone long enough for Hatchworth to have to teach it to Zero, you know? Even if I got to sing it too, it’s Zero’s now, really. That’s when it hit me...and the words...” The Jon grabbed the pocket square to do the rest on his own. His right eye started leaking as well. He sang softly, “ _I want all today, don’t want to hear you say I love you, I love you, I love, love, love you…_

That’s when Rabbit showed up with a big box of the letters and gifts the fans have continued sending to the band, “to forward to the Jon”. She opened her mouth to ask about the crying, but the Jon held up a hand and put on a smile. “Ooh, audience love!”

“Hatchworth is interested in hanging out,” Rabbit said, pulling up the Jon’s beloved rainbow bean bag chair.

The Jon hesitated and screwed up his face. “Maybe in an hour or two? I don’t wanna hurt his feelings, but…”

“It’s okay, he can go referee Upgrade and Zero’s arm wrestling match,” Rabbit reassured him. “My money’s on Upgrade unless they make a rule against biting.”

“I want to be the youngest for a bit,” the Jon said softly, casting his eyes into the box rather than either of his older siblings. “Like when you two were helping Pappy teach me how to walk and talk.”

The Spine and Rabbit made eye contact. Their relationship had become closer since Rabbit became what she was meant to be, and therefore at peace with herself, though they still played up the squabbling onstage to get laughs. They shared a nod, a nod that said things no sentient being that had spent less than 121 years in a close relationship could ever say in nothing but a nod, before helping the Jon sort his fan mail. 

“MOW!” Marshmallow called out from somewhere upstairs, followed by loud crunching noises. The Spine hoped the crunching thing wasn’t a burglar, but this was more important. Someone else could check on the giant interdimensional cat for once. 

The Jon was particularly delighted with a small version of himself made out of ironed plastic beads, and insisted that they find some way to incorporate it into the act.

***

The show was going well. Michael Reed assured the Spine via thumbs-up that the other robots had only mimed punching him when he glitched and needed a reboot, as agreed to be part of a humorous skit in that contingency, though he was sore in a few places where some must have connected. They were probably from Hatchworth, and fair enough given all the times the Spine had mimed hitting him and occasionally connected as part of a skit. 

“The Jon didn’t, though,” Michael whispered when the Spine got close enough.

The audience was overjoyed to see the Jon, of course, and he played them sweetly and eccentrically, like how he played the mandolin. Rabbit’s jokes about the Jon rejoining the band got a pleased response, but the Spine found himself resenting that they’d decided to include that in the banter. 

“If you ever need me again, here, take this,” the Jon said, offering the Spine the bead-Jon. Rabbit grabbed it and tickled it, which the Jon pretended to feel, and then she hit it twice. Ms. Lorene Keaton had once expressed concern that so much of the robots’ humor involved them punching each other. The Spine was supposed to simply admonish Rabbit and stick the doll in his pocket. 

But instead, he kissed it on the cheek. As best he could, anyway, given how flat it was. The Jon put a hand to his own cheek with a look of surprise. The audience aww-ed. Uncomfortable with how much genuine feeling lay behind the improvisation, the Spine declared, “It was for SCIENCE!” Which got a laugh, and everything was back on the rails. He got to intercept and dip Chelsea at the end of “Me and My Baby” on her way from her backup dancing spot to backstage. It was planned but still fun.

During the applause, right at the end, the Spine put an arm around the Jon’s shoulders and pulled him close. For the moment, he could pull him close.

***

When the time came to put the Jon away again, the Jon slow and sleepy but still clinging to the last seconds of consciousness, the Spine kissed him on the cheek for real.


End file.
